I heard a story the other night about an editor who visited the Iowa Workshop and, when asked what sorts of books she published, replied, "Classic books." One of the students asked her, "You mean like Kafka?" Apparently she said, "Oh, I don't think I would publish Kafka."

People don't seem to have a problem with a romanticized New York, in fact that's almost all they ever do, in some sense, is romanticize that place. Los Angeles deserves the same courtesy.

During the 90s, I watched a lot of people getting fat and prosperous, and I thought, culture itself is the casualty of this.

I'm going to write what I feel like writing, which is a great place to be. But it can be hard to get there. It's so easy to get stricken with one kind of self-consciousness or another.

I was so very interested in literature and so relatively uninterested in the movies when I was a teenager.

I sometimes get asked if I think about film stuff while I'm writing fiction, and the answer is, of course not.

We go to literature because it shows us some set of humane values. It is showing us how to live.